Posts Tagged ‘bias’

“After 24 hours, the participants indicated that they occasionally felt embarrassed, self-conscious, and that life, in general, was less satisfying.” Nonetheless, researchers from the University of Otago in New Zealand think they have an “attractive alternative” for weight loss. It’s a dental device with magnets. It attaches to a person’s teeth to prevent them from […]

Are people with overweight, but not obesity, more or less likely to die early than people with a lower BMI? When researchers at CDC and NCI published an answer to this question in 2005, it created quite a stir. The surprising finding was that folks in the range of overweight were not more likely to […]

Late last week, the FDA announced that it intends to ban menthol cigarettes. This is in part because these are the cigarettes that Black smokers prefer. Smoking takes a bigger toll on Blacks than Whites, so maybe this will help reduce a source of health disparities. Indeed it sounds like a good idea. Except that […]

Obesity is growing more prevalent for all. But at the same time, racial and ethnic disparities are growing wider. In the U.S., 42 percent of adults have obesity. For Black women, that number is 57 percent. Despite this high prevalence and wide disparity, though, medical education board exams skip right over obesity and disparities. The […]

We are on the cusp of great progress for anti-obesity medicines. Writing in Cell Metabolism, Fiona Gribble and Stephen O’Rahilly call it the end of the beginning. They have high hopes for new medications to treat obesity – one of the most common and difficult chronic diseases we face. But these advances fly in the […]

From the very early days COVID-19, we saw clues that two pandemics might be interacting – COVID-19 and obesity. But we are not fans of catastrophizing health problems. So the question becomes, how can we come to terms with these synergistic pandemics? Can we do it in a way that brings us closer to solutions? […]

In the new issue of Childhood Obesity, Sarah Armstrong and Ted Kyle tell us the time has come to stop screening for obesity in school. The reason is simple. This screening harms children, but offers them no benefit. Telling a child or the child’s parent they are fat doesn’t help. It does nothing for their […]

Bias comes in many forms. People express bias when they hold to a partial perspective about a person, group, thing, or idea. With bias comes the refusal to consider different points of view. Feelings, not facts, drive our biases and we all have them. On the subject of  COVID-19, vaccines, and vitamins, this is especially […]

BMI stinks. That’s the lead on a lot of stories about how to get a COVID-19 vaccine appointment right now. This is a perfect example of mixed messaging. But it also reflects our very mixed feelings about this measure that’s now almost two centuries old. A BMI of 30 is the threshold for a population-based […]

Let them choose is a seductive maxim for guiding health policy. In one sense, it seems perfectly reasonable. You get to choose. We respect personal agency.  But it can also be quite punitive. You made your choices, now you have a chronic disease. You’re on your own. Sorry. A new paper in the Future Healthcare […]